


Fault Line

by Phrenotobe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Reanimation, Robots, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Nepeta’s insistence that they bring him back, and he oozes in the hallway while they scuffle out the lingering darts of adrenaline, only haste that stops them from anything more than a quick punch up and some t-shirts pulled out of shape at the collar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fault Line

**Author's Note:**

> If I'm filling your prompt, let me know your AO3 and I'll put it to your account as a gift.

It’s Nepeta’s insistence that they bring him back, and he oozes in the hallway while they scuffle out the lingering darts of adrenaline, only haste that stops them from anything more than a quick punch up and some t-shirts pulled out of shape at the collar. 

“Come on!” Nepeta says, grabbing Vriska by the cuff of her remaining sleeve, tugging hard when she won’t move on purpose, and shoving Vriska over with frustration when she doesn’t go. Short as she is, Nepeta’s muscle catches her off balance and she tips over.   
“Stop being a whiny brat,” Vriska says in a surly ruffle on the flagstones, putting up her non-robotic hand up to check her horns for damage, “And don’t pull me around. I just need to know where the machine shop is, right?”  
Nepeta’s lip curls up into a moue, unwilling to acquiesce.   
“Pick him up,” she says, and lopes off, turning her head every now and then to check she’s doing it. Equius drags a long blue streak as Vriska catches him by the foot and pulls, dragging him in a curve around Nepeta’s discarded hat.

They go deep - deeper than Vriska expected, colder than Nepeta remembers. He is shoved undelicately into a cryogenic freezer, on top of something else they don’t look at too hard and an unnerving amount of pre-stored blue opaque liquid. A half-finished robot with curled-wire hair and red-glass eyes rests on the counter, lower half trailing wires only half installed. Vriska gives the blue symbol an open-palmed slap of familiarity, and snorts as she passes by.

“So, what is our plan?” she says lazily, putting both palms on the table and leaning insolently forward to bare her teeth in a grin.   
“We make a robot,” Nepeta says, picking up a discarded head from the floor. She puts it on the table and rotates one of the curved horns forward with a metallic squawk. “A good one.”  
She frowns.  
“Then I guess we install his brain.”  
“Weird,” Vriska comments, finding two left arms and slamming them on the table, “Let’s do it.”  
They pull out a torso from under a bench together, far too big but seemingly the most complex thing in the shop, bar the half-made fembot that serves as an elephant in the room.   
It’s heavy work while they draw the parts together, bicker over the connections, and attempt to make the wire contacts match up, and more than once a set of ribs are elbowed sharply. 

When he’s pulled into an upright position, the head tilts forward, saved from dropping off by the raised rim of the torso piece, legs slack and barely fitted with any armor to cover the wires. They pull him out of the freezer again and lay the electrode net over his cranium, leaving his body propped over the robot’s knees.   
“That’ll do it,” Vriska says, dusting off her hands and wiping the oil off on her jeans, “Guess it’s time to see what this thing can do.”  
“Equius,” Nepeta reminds her, “He’s going to be Equius.”  
“Whatever.”  
The bot boots up with all the haste of a windows 95 under duress, power converters chugging and something clicking off seconds steadily as it goes. A panel on the chest lights up from underneath, flashing lordly blue. The head twitches just once, and Nepeta stuffs her fingers into her mouth with nerves. Vriska tosses her hair, one hand slung into a pocket and the other slack and waiting by her side to pull the kill switch if it all goes rumblespheres-skywards.  
The robot rumbles, a noisepack installed deep inside the chest that echoes reverb though the frame. The head stutters again and lolls sideways, one eyelid closing in a blink and jamming halfway. The lower jaw clenches, and it’s a movement Nepeta knows well. She bounds forward to wrap her arms around the metal torso, more out of joy than anything else.  
“It’s you!” she exclaims, “I knew this would work!”  
Vriska shrugs, pulling the defrosting troll off the table and dropping it back into the freezer.  
“For a little while, yeah,” she says.  
The robot lifts an arm to pap Nepeta’s head between the horns for doing a good job. Moments later the fingers slither down her nape with a rattle of components, a metallic crash as the arm pulls loose of the contacts and falls to the floor.  
“I apologize,” the ‘bot grinds out in separate syllables, “I was not prepared.”


End file.
